Limekilns

The Bruce Arms
and Village Centre

Limekilns, like its neighbour
Charlestown, is a quiet
and attractive village on the north shore of the River Forth. It lies a little
to the west of Rosyth and the
Forth Road Bridge.
Its quietness is helped by being bypassed well to the north by the main road
from Rosyth to the Kincardine Bridges.

It hasn't always been quite so quiet here. As early as the 1300s
Limekilns, called Galletts at the time, served as the main port for the town of
Dunfermline, a few miles
to the north.

Early in the life of the village the importance of the local
limestone became clear, both for farming improvements and for mortar for stone
buildings. An industry quickly grew up using kilns fuelled by charcoal and
later coal to convert lime to quicklime, which was then shipped out to the rest
of eastern Scotland.

Today the only reminder of the industry in Limekilns is the name
itself. From 1750 the industry moved the mile or so along the coast to
Charlestown, whose vast industrial scale limekilns continued to operate until
1956 and remain today.

A sign of Limekilns' early importance is its oldest building, the
King's Cellar. This is reputed to have been used as a wine cellar by royalty
residing in Dunfermline. In reality it is probably more likely to have been a
general warehouse associated with the original harbour, and dating back to the
early 1500s.

Although it is difficult to imagine today, over its long life
Limekilns has been home to a wide range of other industries as diverse as
shipbuilding, soap making and brewing. For many centuries Limekilns was also
the northern terminus for a ferry linking it to
Bo'ness on the southern side of
the Forth. This found an echo in
Robert Louis
Stevenson's"Kidnapped": and it was from
Limekilns that David Balfour and Alan Breck were carried across the Forth in a
rowing boat.

From 1702 the land behind Limekilns became home to Broomhall, a
mansion built by Alexander Bruce of Broomhall, the Earl of Elgin. The current
house on the site was started by his descendent, Charles, the 5th Earl of Elgin
in the 1760s, though work continued on improvements into the 1800s.

The family did much to shape the area around Limekilns. They
replaced Limekiln's existing harbour with Bruce Haven, at the eastern end of
the village, in about 1750. Its role was to export coal from the increasingly
important Fife coalfields. It was also
the Bruces who built Charlestown and moved the
lime industry there from Limekilns.

Today's village of Limekilns occupies the low lying land between
the harbour at Bruce Haven and the higher ground occupied by Broomhall. A tail
extends to the west along the coastal road. Visitors are served by The Bruce
Arms and The Ship; as well as by the Il Pescatore Hotel and Restaurant, all
three looking out across the River Forth.